ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of issues raised by the prevalence of false alarms by automotive active safety systems. It defines the terms 'driver acceptance' and 'false alarms', discusses driver acceptance of false alarms and reviews false alarms within the context of the development of automotive active safety systems. The chapter argues that system developers acknowledge that false alarms are not only pragmatically unavoidable, but have genuine utility when developing active safety systems. It shows that high levels of driver acceptance of issued alerts should become one of the main targets of system development. The chapter presents an empirical methodology for system development based on drivers' acceptance of alerts in situations where false alarms are unavoidable. Driver acceptance has to be an important design goal for any active safety system. False alarms are the only source of alerts frequent enough to allow the driver to develop trust in the system.
